Figure I.-Merluccius bilinearis from the western North Atlantic, where it is called hake or whiting. Figure 2.-Urophycis regius, a common fish of the U.S. east coast, where it is known as spotted hake. America, capensis from South Africa; gayi from Chi Ie; and hubbsi from Argentina. In South Africa, stockfish is another name for Merluccius (Smith, 1954). Hake is used as a common name for a number of kinds of fishes other than Merluccius. Among the Gadidae are six species of Urophycis from the western Atlantic (Bigelow and Schroeder, 1953; Bailey et a!., 1970): chuss, red or squirrel hake; cirratus, Gulf hake; earlii, Carolina hake; fioridanus, sou them hake; reg ius , spotted hake (Fig. 2); tenuis, white, black, mud, or Boston hake. Several other species of Urophycis live along the east coast of South America but do not have English language common names. The related gadid genus Phycis has one western Atlantic species, P. chesteri (Fig. 3), called the longfinned hake (Bigelow and Schroeder, 1953; Bailey et aI., 1970), and two eastern Atlantic species known as forkbeards. Two members of the gadoid family Moridae must be listed, the nearly cosmopolitan deepsea Antimora ros- trata (Fig. 4), known as blue hake (Bigelow and Schroeder, 1953), and species, all are known in English speaking countries as hake. Other English language names also are used for Merluccius, the chief being whiting. In a study of the taxonomy of North and South Ameri- can Merluccius (Ginsberg, 1954), whiting was used as a general name for all species of the genus. Merluccius bilinearis (Fig. I) from the western North Atlantic is called whiting as well as silver hake (Bigelow and Schroeder, 1953), and in New Zealand M. aus- tralis is known as whiting or hake (Graham, 1956). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the designation as whiting of five nominal species of Merluccius: bilinearis from the east coast of North America; pro- ductus from the west coast of North Most kinds of fishes do not have a legal or official common name, and common names in use for any particu- lar species may vary from one region to another, from one group of users to another, and even with size, season, or sex. Thus a biological species may have one or more common names, and equally, or even more troublesome, two or more species may have the same common name. The nature of common names and their relationship to Latinized scientific names has been discussed at greater length by Cohen (1974). The origins of the word hake are not at all clear. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the first usage was in the 14th or 15th century, and the word as presently understood refers in general to the genus Merluccius and several other genera of gadoid (cod- like) fishes. Fish species classified in the genus Merluccius as well as several other genera are often considered to be members of a family Merluciidae, which although related to is distinct from the Gadidae or cod family proper (Marshall and Cohen, 1973). The var- ious named species of Merluccius are rather similar in appearance, and there is not at this time any good way to assign the correct scientific name to Merluccius from many regions of the world. There may be as few as 4 or as many as 15 or more different biologi- cal species. The taxonomy of Merluc- cius is being studied at present by a Japanese ichthyologist, Tadashi Inada. Whatever may be the number and cor- rect scientific names of Merluccius Daniel M. Cohen is with the National Systematics Laboratory, National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC 20560. DANIEL M. COHEN Names of the Hakes 2 Marine Fisheries Review